NIN -- _Year Zero_

...he IS getting old.

Seconded. Trent usually satisfies.

I haven't heard a single thing from Reznor that I outright hated. At the least, I think he's one of the best producers working today.

He borrowed Glenn Danzig's muscle mass.

I agree with all the positive thoughts on With Teeth. I lost interest in NIN when The Fragile came out, but With Teeth got me excited about them again.

My wife and I saw them on the last tour and they rocked!

guuhhhh

Half of "With Teeth" was a great album, the other half contained crap like the title track and "Only".

whatchew talkin 'bout, "Only" was one of the best songs on the album! though i guess the lyrics do kinda blow.

i agree Reznor's never been a great lyricist, in fact he's probably gotten worse. but if you can't get over bad lyrics i can't help you!

oh COME ON

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DYq3NPD7TVk&mode=related&search=

Sometimes, only sometimes...

It's one of the most obvious things he took from Depeche, actually.

xpost Well yeah Dan but that describes about two million other lyricists don't it? It doesn't take a rare genius to write naive poetry! But like I'm saying, Martin and Trent are coming from completely different worlds of naive poetry!

the combination of standard sex and death tropes handled via emotional bombast as well as sometimes forced and usually pretty straightforward rhymes. Neither are by any stretch of the imagination complicated in their lyrical vocabulary.

But I just think that's a really really loose connection when we're talking about Martin Gore's lyrics being the most obvious thing that Trent Reznor took from DM. I guess in the context of industrial/synth pop Trent's lyrics are closer to Depeche's than, say, Skinny Puppy's. But in a wider context I don't think it's any surprise that two grown-up angsty teenagers can write sex/death tropes with straightforward rhymes and uncomplicated lyrical vocabulary without one directly borrowing from the other.

I said *one* of the most obvious things. Not the sole one, not the most important one. You're looking for an overriding connection I did not argue, and I'm starting to get frustrated with this willful misreading, frankly.

just noticed this upthread, from a track-by-track review...

Vessel: (...) This would be great to fuck to.
-- Trayce, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 1:47 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

that is EXAACTLY what i thought the first time i heard this one! still do actually :o !!

vessel's my favorite track on this by far

And that's it. Tour over in a couple of days, and that show in Hawaii will also be the final performance from this incarnation of the live band, apparently.

http://starbulletin.com/2007/09/14/features/story05.html

Relevant bit:

Speaking by phone Wednesday from somewhere between gigs in Seoul and Hong Kong, Reznor was low-key, firm but accommodating.

And he had some unexpected news to tell.

"YOU ARE getting the last show of the current incarnation of the band."

Although Reznor's touring band of drummer Josh Freese, guitarist Aaron North, bassist Jeordie White and keyboardist Alessandro Cortini are excellent support players, "at this point, I want to switch things around a bit. Nine Inch Nails as a rock band configuration, we've done it and we've done it again. I see other ways I can present the material in concert, more challenging, something new. I don't want it to go stale."

I wonder if the bands they all left will take them back :-/

should i go see them if i have a free ticket? i liked aaron north when he was in Icarus Line.

Yes, this is/was Reznor's best live band yet.

Indeed, take the opportunity. Glad I caught 'em earlier this year.

Fun game to play at a nine inch nails concert in honolulu: Spot The Aloha Shirts.

Three (Two of them were on NIN roadies, the third on a very excited fan)

So, good show? Did he say anything memorable?

setlist & stuff:

http://www.echoingthesound.org/phpbbx/viewtopic.php?t=26946

he didnt say anything for about an hour and fifteen minutes.

he briefly acknowledged that it was their "first and last date" on their US tour.

later when he introduced the band it sounded like he started to say something thoughtful about it being their last show together, but just said "you never know...you never know..." and trailed off.

he told a story about NIN's last time in Hawaii back in 94 too.

Also I'm pretty gay for Aaron North.

oh lil goth

http://nin.com/

08 October 2007: Big News
Hello everyone. I've waited a LONG time to be able to make the
following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally
free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have
been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the
business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very
different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a
direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.
Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008.
Exciting times, indeed.

posted by Trent Reznor at 10:45 AM.

"Oh and we'd like to announce the innovative practice of announcing an album ten days before...DAMN!"

Yeah, The Macallan 18 Year, Monday, October 1, 2007 8:41 AM (1 week ago) OTM

"the real question is how will Trent Reznor respond"

Radiohead - In Rainbows

LOL

Let us anticipate the remix disc:

---

# Gunshots By Computer: Saul Williams
# The Great Destroyer: Modwheelmood
# My Violent Heart: Pirate Robot Midget
# The Beginning Of The End: Ladytron
# Survivalism: Saul Williams
# Capital G: Epworth Phones
# Vessel: Bill Laswell
# The Warning: Stefan Foodchild Feat. Doudou N'diaye Rose
# Meet Your Master: The Faint
# God Given: Stephen Morris & Gillian Gilbert
# Me, I'm Not: Olof Dreijer (The Knife)
# Another Version Of The Truth: Kronos Quartet & Enrique Gonzalez Müller
# In This Twilight: Fennesz
# Zero Sum: Stephen Morris & Gillian Gilbert

Who the fuck let Laswell in there, is what I want to know.

Pirate Robot Midget?

Is that a band of sixth graders in gifted class?

Mike Patton's greatest triumph!

Who the fuck let Laswell in there, is what I want to know.

Some Laswell remixes (see: the Painkiller "Execution Ground" remixes) are amazing. Others (see: "Emerald Aether") are awful. I could see him remixing NiN fairly deftly.

Although I guess "Emerald Aether" wasn't really so much a remix as a proper album. Or a plane crash with no survivors.

Well, if nothing else, you can make your own:

The actual title of this album is Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. The DVD-Rom contains every track from Year Zero in multi-track format (Mac and PC). Perhaps for the first time, the master multi-tracks for every recording on a major album are being made available to the public. The tracks are pre-formatted for Apple GarageBand and Ableton Live (Mac or PC). The DVD-ROM also adds the demo version of Ableton Live (Mac or PC) and generic WAVE files at 16 bit 44K that can be loaded into any audio editor.

What I hope and presume this means -- yes, it's *your* chance for Trent Reznor a capellas to be mashed-up over dink-synth-pop loops. Be on the cutting edge of 2001!

I admire the guy for everything but his (recent) music.

Hopefully it's pulled off better than that Nurse With Wound "remix it yourself" experiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D

L34K3D.

Still on Interscope, so no innovative release experiments like he did with Saul Williams or anti-label f*ck you like he did with the Broken and Closure DVD torrents - according to that wikipedia article this is the final contractual obligation before he left.

# Zero Sum: Stephen Morris & Gillian Gilbert

?!?

according to that wikipedia article this is the final contractual obligation before he left.

Still, there are some decent-to-exciting names in that list (Fennesz!) and I must admit I'm looking forward to fiddling around with the multitracks. Hopefully this will turn out closer to Further Down the Spiral than Things Fall Apart.

track 11 (very minimalistic) : 14 minutes!

01. Guns By Computer (Saul Williams) (1:43)
02. The Great Destroyer (Modwheelmood) (4:19)
03. My Violent Heart (Pirate Robot Midget) (2:34)
04. The Beginning of the End (Ladytron) (4:20)
05. Survivalism (Saul Williams) (4:19)
06. Capital G (Epworth Phones) (7:26)
07. Vessel (Bill Laswell) (6:10)
08. The Warning (Stefan Goodchild Featuring Doudou N'Diaye Rose) (3:43)
09. Meet Your Master (The Faint) (3:35)
10. God Given (Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert) (4:27)
11. Me, I'm Not (Olof Dreijer) (14:00)
12. Another Version of the Truth (Kronos Quartet and Enrique Gonzalez Muller) (4:25)
13. In This Twilight (Fennesz) (4:37)
14. Zero-Sum (Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert) (5:38)

Okay I am totally geeked that half of New Order is remixing some of this stuff.

I listened to Year Zero again for the first time in several months and it actually clicked! I was pleasantly surprised.

ok, this is pretty great.

Lol, Universal.

http://www.nin.com/index.html#1125746261486643743

(in short: letting fans download the individual tracks of his songs for remixing is okay, hosting the fans' remixes is a DMCA violation, so the remix site stays offline)

go trent.

Picked up the remix disc, like it well enough so far. Pirate Robot Midget of "My Violent Heart" = pretty good!

So I've been playing the shit out of this remix disc because it is mind-bogglingly superior to the original album on almost every level. "The Great Destroyer" and "Capital G" on here are so fucking tough.

I need to give it a relisten. Great way to kiss off the majors at least.

i never heard this but i downloaded a 24GB Nine Inch Nails file with everything you can imagine on it.Took about 2 months to get it all.They were amazing in concert this time around but didn't draw a very big crowd.Glad i went.Anyway i'm on to listen to the remix thing.

more people need to listen to this remix album to revel in its glory with me

I will freely admit the original version of "God Given" is way more effective, though

Year Zero is my least favorite NIN album and I don't care about the remixers on this. Should I bother anyway?

several months later, but YES (esp. "The Great Destroyer" and "Capital G")

so a random song came on the Last.fm station I created based on my Sony music festival and I am sitting here going "who is this super cool A Perfect Circle tribute band, this is a v v pretty song" and it is Modwheelmood, the dudes who did my favorite remix on the Year Zero remix album

Trent Reznor says HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions are moving forward with the development of “Year Zero,” the grim sci-fi epic that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG).

“We are in [the development phase of] pre-production with HBO and BBC [Worldwide Productions] to do a miniseries,” Reznor said Monday. “It’s exciting. I probably shouldn’t say too much about it except that I understand that there’s a thousand hurdles before anything shows up in your TV listing. It’s been an interesting and very educational process and it cleared the HBO hurdle a few months ago and now we’re writing drafts back and forth. So it’s very much alive and incubating at the moment.”

btw this album is great

Yes! I always had a soft spot for Capital G even though it’s dated af lyrically now but My Violent Heart and Survivalism are still up there.

Also, The Great Destroyer

The Fennesz remix of In This Twilight is all time for me. Should have been the version on the album proper imho

Yeah I think I liked the remix album better than the original